


Learning to Make Fire

by filia_noctis



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Depictions of shell shock (possible PTSD), M/M, no ketchup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-04
Updated: 2014-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-28 03:23:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2717066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/filia_noctis/pseuds/filia_noctis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laurie and Ralph sleeping. Post-canon; Laurie at Oxford. Ralph probably down for a visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning to Make Fire

**Author's Note:**

> The title is quoted from Margaret Atwood's 'Habitation'.   
> Thanks to toujours_nigel for being a truly gratifying beta. There would be no writing without you.

Laurie wakes up once near dawn, stifled, to Ralph’s soft snores. For a moment he shifts, frowning to a subcranial sensation of there being too much touch—skin on skin—than what he has schooled himself to in bed these last few months.  It doesn’t take long for the dysphoria (such a clawing itch in his middle) to turn sweet with knowledge. His hackles receding, his breathing now beginning to be unhitched, Lurie feels rather than sees Ralph’s arm looped around his waist, Ralph’s middle pressing against and retreating from his back in sync with Ralph’s heavy, hot snores that tickled his ears into wakefulness. His bad knee is neatly bracketed against the wall with cushions (when had Ralph got out of bed to fetch them?) and he can just about move the toes (on his good leg) to know that Ralph’s pyjama has ridden up some. He ends up nearly tickling Ralph on the shins, and Ralph wriggles, stops snoring to mumble a complaint, loops his hand and leg more firmly around Laurie’s (in reproof?) and is fast asleep before Laurie’s soft chuckle begins to be audible.   
  
Laurie can’t check his breath, nor his rising trepidation—try as he might—long after any urge to laugh has subsided. Though loathe to open his eyes, he is wide awake. He can nearly feel the trickle of the beads of perspiration gathering at his temple, and wonders whether Ralph can feel the dampness of his skin. Ralph has him in a near chokehold, pressed against the wall.   
  
Laurie has been bad about being touched or held too close since the hospital (one of the many bits of knowledge the newness of civilian life seemed to surprise him with). The hospital had given little reason for knee-jerk reactions beyond a point, visits to the vicarage since had been fewer and far between (God knows what Mother made of the way he had flinched when Mr. Straike had come up from behind to thump his back), and after the vestiges of the barracks held onto by the hospital and its strictly clinical if intrusive touch, the utter bedlam of city and university life had effected a long-drawn shock. Laurie had realised he liked using his grandfather’s Malacca cane increasingly to stay at an arm’s length from dons and fellows alike, rather than shifting the occasional weight while limping (strutting more like) around the long corridors of Oxford.   
  
Now Ralph’s neck was pressing against his, his nose grazing the wall. Laurie has learnt to file away Ralph’s innate instinct to clutch onto him, the cushions, or plain curl into a ball. He knows the dreams are vivid. He often suspects whiffs of nightmares. Like now. He knows Ralph will wake with a start and an apology (the first too harrowing, the second too formal) if he is nudged. Such secrets they save each other from, Laurie thinks. And starts breathing slowly. Deliberately. He kisses Ralph’s palm and shifts it a bit, confident in Ralph’s exhaustion from a long drive, and a longer evening.   
  
Laurie braces himself, and bridges the little distance between their bodies. He can nearly feel Ralph’s small smile. He decides against turning around right away. Perhaps in some time, he tells himself, after Ralph’s grip has slackened and he knows there wouldn’t be bleak horror staring back at him in the one unfocussed instant of wakefulness.   
  
For now, he lets Ralph clutch him. And keeps breathing. And calms himself enough to let the precious smell of the tobacco in Ralph’s breath, the graze of the silk of Ralph’s pyjamas, the luminescent coolness of Ralph’s skin, the prickle of his eyelashes soak in, to be filed away, piece by piece.   
  
Perhaps some night, Laurie thinks dispassionately —still loathe to open his weary eyes—he can bend his mind to dream of the smell, the touch, even the claustrophobia in their impending, harrowing absence. Perhaps this has turned into one such dream already.   
            
Laurie sucks in all the air to be had and kisses the scarred tissue above Ralph’s palm. Ralph gathers him closer, murmuring Laurie—hackles still up—keeps breathing. 


End file.
